Silver and Gold | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming Author Michele Rhem, who presents us with her poignant memoirs of the Rabbit Patch, where her diaries weave tales of a simpler, expressive life lost to many, but gathered together in her most familiar environs - the Rabbit Patch.

    This week began with snow and ice at the rabbit patch. The wind caused quite a commotion with its' chilling gales. On Monday, schools and businesses closed. Snow is as common as a "blue moon" in the south, so in light of that, we just stop things altogether. On Thursday, the weather made you want to plant a garden. It felt like a day in late April. I put the windows up in the old farmhouse because of it. Now it is Saturday and a silver sky is sprinkling us with icy drops of rain- This is why nobody planted a garden on Thursday.

    Jenny and Will are taking an overnight trip without Lyla, so I am in Elizabeth City. Jenny took great care to assure Lyla, the family dog, Jada and I would wait in great comfort, til their return. Our food, my coffee, chocolate in the case of desperate hours and written directions on remote controls were all covered . I also got lessons on the various ways to operate each remote. What a complicated affair it is to watch a television. I just wished I could get Lyla "hooked" on Downton Abbey.

    I had planned on having Wills' mom, Miss Claudia over for coffee and pumpkin bread, then later for grilled pimento cheese sandwiches and my Aunt Agnes' version of a "waldorf salad". As it turns out, Miss Claudia has an awful cold and is not up to social events, though she assured me this morning she was up to help out, should circumstances demand it-and she would. Too, there is Danny and Michelle just around the corner and they would be here at "the drop of a hat"-or if I ran out of coffee.

    While Lyla naps. I am sitting in Jennys' dining room, at a large table. A beautiful chandelier of cut glass, casts light as the whole day has seemed in a shadow. There are two large windows I face as I write this entry. A crepe myrtle, a camellia and a large empty lot, block the street view and I like that. The lot would be a lovely spot for a summer garden, I think.

    The house is especially quiet, while Lyla sleeps. I thought about this weekend in the weeks, before now. I wondered how Lyla would fair, without her doting parents close by. I had hopes of long walks by the river and even a picnic, but you can not depend on doing such things in January and today is proof of that.

    Today is the day to watch the winter birds at the feeder from the window in the nursery, while the neighbors' cat watches as well. It is the kind of day to give your grand child a warm bath after supper and then put a little gown on her, that your own mother gave her. Then you read Goodnight Moon, as you have done a thousand times before-and you are glad of it. Some things , truly, do not" wear out . . . " nor will "moth and rust corrupt them."

    While Lyla sleeps in her new little gown, I will watch the January moon rise and I will count this day a good one. The day had its' silver-and the night has its' gold. . .and I spent it well.